Support for the US link

[Simon Vandore]

At 05:05 PM 10/31/95 +1100, Tony Barry wrote:
>All this preamble is so that I can raise the question whether Telstra is
>supporting the overseas link adequately.  It would seem that a good case
>could be made to say they are not, as they allow the link to saturate, are
>slow to add additional capacity and are only adding capacity when the link
>becomes unusable rather than forecasting increased demand and planning for
>it.  A conspiracy theorist could no doubt suggest reasons why this might
>happen.  There is a well known  alternative to conspiracies as  an
>explanation which could well apply in this case .

All evening I've been typing <tr><th><td></tr> so excuse me if I've stopped
thinking :) *yawn* But I can't figure out what you mean by the last sentence.

Anyway, yes, I'm trying to figure out what exactly Telstra is doing (or not
doing), and why.

The newsgroups aus.net.status and aus.comms contain a lot of angry postings
on this subject at the moment. Everyone has different theories, but anyone
who hasn't read them should have a glance, just to see the anger among other
users. Meanwhile, new users are not sure why the Internet is so exciting, if
it's going to be so excruciatingly slow. And power users are finding ISDN
lines are not worth the (ridiculous) expense.

I haven't a theory yet... I keep thinking that connecting the dots has gotta
be more complex.

1) Telstra owns the main AU<->US Internet connection and resells it to commerce.
2) AFAIK, anyone who sets up an alternative link is probably also paying
Telstra.
3) Telstra is in partnership with The Microsoft Network, which is about to
offer Internet access natively, through another Telstra connection to the US.

I think that in all of those situations, Telstra wins. Accusations are
common of favouring MSN by neglecting the rest of the Internet, or turning
people off the Internet and on to MSN, but none of this makes much sense
when you think about it...

Surely Telstra, through economies of scale, would make more money in the
long run by having one well-maintained link of its own which it resells to
many second-tier providers, than by selling a few private links instead to
competitors (which are now appearing, to serve those who can't stand the
Telstra service)? Pushing everyone towards MSN would seem to make even less
sense... Why go for one big customer when you can have lots and lots of
medium-sized ones?

That's just one angle... I'm sure I could approach the thing from lots of
other viewpoints. But I think what you must mean by "a well-known
alternative to conspiracies" is bureaucratic bungling -- that the people
making the BIG decisions just don't get it.

There are some amazing stories around... A $200,000 mainframe sitting idle
because the guy who knew how to work it has left... Departments that blow
the last few hundred thousand dollars of their budget on stuff they don't
really need, because their funding will be cut next year if there's a
surplus... while 6Mbps Internet links are left to grind at less than 2400bps.

The Americans are playing with Internet radio and video, while Australians
can't even telnet successfully most of the time. Ultimately it's really,
really bad for our country's preparedness for the future. Hmm, that was a
bit jingo but I think I meant it :)

Simon.

--
Simon Vandore - nomis~\ua.moc.angam.www\\:ptth
simon@magna.com.au - TheBeck@IRC - My ideas only.
Writer, journalist, HTMLer, and probably for hire.
Electronic Frontiers Australia - editor@efa.org.au